Posts Tagged 'Mexico City'

Launching back-to-back data centers across the world in less than 24 hours is easier said than done. Launching three sites over the Christmas holiday, well, that’s just a Christmas miracle (and a lot of hard work).

That’s right. If you haven’t been keeping count, we’ve opened three data centers in the last seven days! Tokyo and Mexico City went live last week on December 22, and Frankfurt started accepting orders on December 29.

As you can imagine, the development and operations teams have been working around the clock to get these three new data centers up and running. “The Go Live Team has been working until two, three, four in the morning, and they are all working through their vacations to make sure we meet our deadlines,” says Scott Kennedy, project manager.

As soon as the lease is signed on the data center space, and SoftLayer moves into the operational state, Kennedy takes over. From Dallas, he coordinates all the moving pieces, from equipment to personnel. The Go Live Team arrives one month before launch to start setting up shop. Then a week later, the network team (mostly Houston-based SLayers) arrives to set up the cabling for the network devices.

Everything is tested, tested again, and tested a third time to make sure we're ready for the first day of service. (About two weeks prior to the Tokyo and Mexico City launches, emails about this test being enabled or that test being completed began filling my inbox.)

All Systems Go

Kennedy says the key to the successful launches has been communication and the SLayers’ hard work. And it shows—orders started rolling in the moment the TOK02 option became available on the order form. This just proves how necessary expansion is to meeting our customers’ needs. Each new data center helps provide better performance, flexibility, and control closer to where our customers need it. And because these data centers are the first in their respective countries, those needing to compute and store sensitive data required to remain in Mexico, Japan, or Germany can now do so.